It Couldn't Be
by MissDevon
Summary: written during her Cancer scan, this is an introspective piece on the turmoil Sami kept to herself and why she was so adamant about so few people knowing the truth


_**It Couldn't Be**_

Sami slipped out of bed and went into the living room, her mind racing as she waited for the tests results. She knew she should be sharing what was going on in her mind with Rafe, but she just couldn't. She couldn't admit her fears to anyone.  
Sighing she picked up a picture of Johnny, her mind going back to how scared she was that her son had Cancer, would be losing his eye. She had taken some comfort in the fact that he was cured now, and Daniel had saved his other eye.

But not everyone with Cancer could be saved.  
She knew that truth all too well.  
Quietly, she went to the bookshelf and took out a photo albumn.

She didn't look at it often; couldn't allow herself to. If she did she remembered the other life she had had. The one that she should've been living. How her life now could be different.  
She remembered when she had a 'mother' who loved her and a father who adored her and her family was intact.  
Back before she was shipped off to her grandparents in Colorado and she ran after men, because that was the example that Marlena had set for her.  
Back before she was a disappointment.  
Before her father rather take on suicide missions than love and live with his family,

Oh, it was different now.  
She had learned how to pretend to have a 'good' relationship with her mother, and her father was in town.

But now they weren't who she wanted.  
She wanted the parents she had had before she learned that Cancer was more than commercials for St. Judes and mathathons.  
Before she learned that it could take someone you loved from you.

Before it could destroy families.

Flipping through the pages of the albumn she remembered when she was a happy little girl with dreams. Some she had achieved, others she had never been able to.

She remembered feeling loved and safe.  
Nighttime prayers and being tucked in with someone who laughed and teased and told stories.

Back before her 'parents' came back into her world and turned it upside down.

Coming to the back of the book, she found the letter that had once been written to her. One she hardly ever read. Of the dreams the woman she had thought of as a mother had written to her so she wouldn't forget her.

And right now, Sami couldn't.  
She was the age that Isabella was when she had died, that didn't escape her.  
Isabella had had an infant and a new husband; she had a new husband and twins who would be entering kindergarten soon and a toddler.  
She had a son entering college and they all needed her.

How did she find the strength to do this? Go through the tests and face the results with just Rafe and her father at her side.  
She couldn't put John, who in some ways she still thought of as a father, through watching someone he love die from Cancer again. She couldn't sit there and listen to her mother's platitudes and Carrie's promises that she'd help raise her children in her stead since she couldn't have any of her own.

She wanted more for them then she had had.  
Of pretend love and forced loved and being an obligation.

The little girl inside of her wanted her family back.

Dad John, Mom Isabella, happiness in a house filled with love and teasing and no idea that Cancer could destroy it all.

She had been strong for her son, how did she do it for herself, especially with the date of the biopsy repeating in her head?  
She remembered that it would'd been Isabella's birthday.  
It bothered her that Lexie didn't.  
She knew she wasn't the only one.

Slowly she put the book away, and then looked out the window at the sky and to a certain star. She wanted to hope that Isabella was looking down at her and over her.  
She knew that she wouldn't be happy with many of the things that she had done over the years, but she knew that unlike her family, especially her 'mother' that Isabella would have never judged her. She would've listened and then forgiven and put her back on the right path.  
Forgive her the way she always did Victor.  
Support her the way she always did John.

And that was why Sami still considered herself their little girl in many ways, even if she never said it.

So, she stood there and silently repeated the prayer she had been taught by Isabella, hoping that she was the guardian angel who was supposed to be watching out for her and hoping that she would help to keep her healthy- or if the worse was to happen, would give her strength to fight.

She was, afterall, the only one that Eric had told about his dream of Isabella defending him in a courtroom after his car accident. The one he should have never walked away from.  
In her dreams, she saw Isabella watching over Grace and taking care of her.  
Being the mother to her little girl that she had once been to her and should've been to Brady,

Sadly, Sami walked back to her bedroom, thinking of the chances she had wasted and hoping for the chance to correct so many of them.

Slipping back into bed, she hoped she would dream of happier times and of playing in the park with Grace and talking with Isabella, who she knew would give her advice on how to live her life to the fullest, no matter how much time she had.

And tomorrow she'd go to the cemetery with Rafe.  
Together they would go to Grace, and on her own she'd go to Isabella, and then she'd have the tests that would decide just how much more of a life she'd have.

She'd fight for it, as she had everything else in her life.

Because if nothing else, that was what the woman who she should've grown up calling mom or step-mother had taught her. That you didn't give up on life and the ones you loved, no matter how dark it got. No matter how they told you to give up.  
in the end you died with those you loved around you.  
wether goodbyes were from videotapes or from letters, or if you died in the arms of the man you loved.

You made the rules as to how you lived and died.  
And Sami knew she wouldn't give up without a fight.  
She had too much to live for and a role model to look up to on how to live whatever time she had…


End file.
